Saturday, 4 February 2012

The 2kDozen 500: #47 - Blondes, "Blondes"

"Psychedelic and throbbing", they said. Yes, please. Like a transcendental headache on an astral projection to the seaside.

It's intense, but it doesn't drone or growl. Just liminal menace and low-slung rhythms. The track titles pair off nicely as well - "Lover"/"Hater" followed by "Business"/"Pleasure", "Wine"/"Water" and "Gold"/"Amber". It even has a touch of The Orb or The KLF's "Space" album in its no-nonsense exploration, lights winking and scanners sweeping. "Pleasure" in particular has a gorgeous, crabby Ming The Merciless electro-thunder, crackling out across the artificial horizon.

"Wine" intoxicates as you might expect, were you as cloddish of the imagination as I am. Maybe if I had a clearer idea of the means of production, I could work out why this is quite so good. I could better understand and describe the effects. It bubbles as it slinks as it moves. It's a Willy Wonka caramel starcruiser with twin Soda Stream engines. (It isn't.) It's the sound the TARDIS should make when it dematerialises. (Or at least it should be.) The sound propulses.

Reading a bit more about this release, it's a compilation of three 12" releases plus "Gold"/"Amber". And the last two (at least) were almost entirely improvised and each recorded in one take. So there's the energy, there's the forward motion. It finally dissipates on "Amber" with all the oceanic ebbing metaphors I can muster. Expert.